The Well

Nigel Shafran began his fashion career while still a teenager by photographing friends around London. Shafran since then - as The Well goes to show - has never abandoned his personal, down to earth approach. Even as sets got bigger in the 1990s and 2000s, Shafran resisted celebrity culture and by and large photographed models in their most banal moments (in one shot we see Cara Delevingne and Edie Campbell in a car on the highway. Campbell briefly takes her hands off the steering wheel to throw two thumbs up). The Well is a retrospective of Shafran’s work, which blended the commercial and the personal. It’s told through photos, interviews with colleagues and friends, as well as an essay by Kathy Acker. 

Here’s a quote from Shafran's stylist Melanie Ward about a shoot on spacemen in suburbia: “Nothing was overly planned. In those days, we had the luxury of time, but our collaborations were spontaneous and personal, defined by things that provoked emotions in us. I remember wrapping an old TV antennae with tin foil and attaching it to a headband for the model to wear.”

And another from model Cecilia Chancellor: “It was so refreshing for me to do this shoot for Harpers & Queen. Even though it was a fashion story, Nigel just wanted to photograph me as me.”